


monster

by -aforesaid (floater)



Series: to infinity and beyond [3]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Crying, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Platonic Relationships, Sadsadsadsad, Talking, Trauma, i actually don't know how to tag this, tenny, they talk about things okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floater/pseuds/-aforesaid
Summary: 「 ten and youngho share tears 」
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Seo Youngho | Johnny
Series: to infinity and beyond [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/926391
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	monster

**Author's Note:**

> hi, it's been awhile :)  
as always, this is awful and most likely filled with typos that i kinda tried to find lmaooo  
this one seems most choppy with the flow of it all so uh..sorry =(  
end notes contain trigger warnings!

### monster

his body feels like stone, old and heavy, aged and far too bulky to move with ease. he drags it to the bottom bunk, as if it’s not his own, but his knees give out before he can gather the strength to sit down, and he kneels beside the bed instead.

he’s weak now, so weak, and he just can’t help it.

he eyes long and messy hair, the way it falls shortly and tickles youngho's nape messily, the childish way he usually combs it makes its way to the forefront of ten’s mind and, suddenly he finds himself uselessly thinking back to the sometimes pointless, minute actions his poor cellmate made; all so incriminating if one studied him.

everything he did was like that of a little boy, and it only made ten’s heart ache more—because if all took into consideration every move youngho made, listened to every word he said, it’d be clear he was still so small, still so scared, still _just a boy_; and it didn’t seem fair that he existed so miserably trapped in a prison, despite doing what was, in all worlds, _right_.

_"why are you here?"_

chittaphon's voice wavers each word he speaks, as if the meaning and sound are too heavy and he won’t be able to keep his tongue steady enough to finish—but he does, somehow, even as he watches closely and feels guilt, feels wronged _for_ his cellmate.

he doesn't think youngho should be here. this is no place for the innocent.

yet youngho only lets out a yawn in response, stretching; nonchalant. his body curves and twists and he shifts onto his side—he is no boy, that is what he tries to flaunt—his face and ten's own merely inches apart the more he moves; their expressions mirrored only in the darkness of their haunted gazes. he smiles, he's smiling, but ten can read between the nonexistent lines, can see the pain in youngho's space black pupils; _"I killed someone."_

maybe, maybe, ten hadn't cried in years.

the last time he wept so pathetically was the night he shot a man for just a couple thousands, his lungs filled with the dust of drugs and his mind dripping away in the form of anger—and he’d raided that man’s house, saw a daughter and thought to capitalize as he sent in men to collect and go, get what they want then kill—

but he'd lost it, lost it when he realized he'd killed them, lost it when the drugs wore off; and he'd _cried._

ten thought he'd only cried for bigger things, like the way he'd cried back on the fields, the way he'd sympathize with the cries of help from his own prey—but god, never this.

his eyes were wet and glossy, tears building up and swelling over to trail down his face—never this, he thinks, never this: because tears were produced to alleviate the pressure, to calm your own mind, but to cry for something he would've looked away from after _committing _; he felt like a joke.

he was crying over milk spilled eons ago.

"why," he whispers, "why are you here?"

the question stains his tongue with blackened blood, there's a storm of bodies he'd slayed; bursting out from his lungs and barreling into his ribcage. his heart beats faster, faster, faster— "I killed," youngho whispers, "ten, I killed a man—I really killed him, that's why." 

no, no, _no_.

(it’s almost as if he’s convinced himself, how sickening.)

"you, you're wrong." he says, voice no louder than a mouse and its laughter, _"you killed a monster."_

somehow, youngho seems to falter, his eyes gloss over and he chews on his inner cheek, "I killed a man, ten, he lived and breathed a-and, I took it all away from him because, because—I-I just did, ten. I killed a man."

chittaphon grabs the other man's hand, feels his warm skin and healthy flesh and the abuse hidden within. he wonders if this poor boy would remember the pain he felt forever, if his muscles and bones would forever recall the way it’d been subject to enduring the last thing you’d expect kin to do—

"y-you, _you didn't_, youngho, you killed a _monster_."

could he even change youngho’s mind? humanity is but a dying thing, how could he trust a killer, a horrible man who felt no remorse? how could he believe a liar?

“no man would ever do what he did.” he whispered still, “he was a monster, youngho, a _monster_, ‘was a nasty, evil being—he wasn’t a man anymore! the moment he laid his hands on your family—on _you_; he lost everything that made him human.”

youngho's eyes glaze over a little more, wet like small oceans painted white and black and brown. he curls into himself, gaze downcast until his face is tucked into his bunched up arms, his knees sliding up to touch his chest—he holds himself, and it dawns upon ten so sadly that, that’s what he’d always have to do; hold himself because he trusted no others to.

"h-how?" he whimpers, vulnerable, "he was, ten, he was a-alive and I just..." he sniffles, chittaphon feels the heat radiating off the boy in waves, he sobs—"killed him. I killed him, just because...because—"

_"because he hurt you."_ ten’s head hurts as he says it, feeling a little emptier as the seconds pass—never this, he thinks.

youngho's quaking figure halts as ten's voice softly floats off into the air.

_"..no."_ youngho whispers, "it was my fault, I didn't—I didn't have to, b-but...but I did and he's, ah, he's d-dead now."

never, never this—but tears are falling from chittaphon's eyes and they burn with sympathy as his head lolls and his forehead rests against the cold metal bar upholding the bed.

it's quiet, for so little it seems to be for so long—but in that little time, maybe a minute and a half, the “king of all crimes” fills his mind with thought by thought of how badly he wished he could _save_ youngho.

just a small boy. just a little boy. not a killer.

only a minute and a half more passes.

if he were a good man in a different universe, though still in this time and place, youngho would _never_ have to live like this—he would help him, in any way, even if that meant he’d become a killer in that world too.

that man…ten wishes he killed him _himself_.

"he groomed you for it," he finally croaks out, tears thick like blood and hot like flames, "god," he gasps for air, "he hurt you, he—before you even knew how sex worked, _what_ sex was— he was hurting you!"

“he made you think it was okay!" he stresses, "he deserved it, he did youngho; he deserved it, he deserved worse, all of it..." he pauses, "he wasn't a good person, he wasn’t a good man, he wasn't; because he hurt you, over and over and you couldn't even _stop_ him, couldn't even hurt him back, it wasn’t fair—”

“but I didn't have to kill him!” youngho wails, his form shaking once more, and chittaphon wonders so randomly if that sick fuck enjoyed seeing him like this—wonders how many times the innocent beauty that was youngho was left shaking, afraid, crying—“I didn't h-have to kill him...that’s what they say.”

the words reach ten's ears with a heavy air, his distress bringing red to his face and a thickness to his tongue; he feels more tears falling, hotter and fatter and a bit painful—

_"he raped you."_

disregard his crimes, forget faithful nights he'd kill another being just for a look he was given—all that seemed to translate right in his chaotic mess of a mind was that stone cold youngho, who seemed to be too gray to stand out, was raped and beat by someone he barely knew for half of his entire life; and he'd gone to jail for it.

"why are you here?" he croaks out again, snot dripping from his nose and spit peppering out of his mouth—he doesn't remember the last time he'd cried this hard, for something like this, because, god, never this—he wants to know why, _why_ youngho was here if he did nothing wrong.

"I killed someone."

"a monster..." he says again, face staining with tears of sin. he has no place to try and fix youngho, but _god_, never this! but a monster, a monster is what that man was. “a monster.” he repeats.

_like me_ is left unsaid.

the realization would be too much—this wasn’t about him, not at all.

"I-I get it…" youngho replies hoarsely, tone scathing, brown eyes large—"he h-hurt me and that's “unforgivable” and bad—but who cares? I-I’m already here, who cares?”

the words make ten falter.

who cares?

“I care.”

“you don’t.” he says, and his voice sounds so child-like, so small and hurt and—and ten feels like a hypocrite, like a hungry wolf consoling a rabbit, condemning wolves as if he wasn’t one himself.

but this wolf is old, this wolf is tired, and this wolf would rather die of starvation than eat this poor rabbit.

_“I do.”_

big brown eyes stare at him—still cloudy, still tired, still innocent. the gray bleakness of his gaze is still present, but he looks a bit more alive—pink to his skin, a safer glint in his eyes.

words that neither of them can manage to speak float into the air through saddened, broken gazes—exhaustion always follows depression, they both know, and it blends with the sudden security chittaphon’s words seemed to have created.

youngho mumbles sweetly (naïvely, but ten is sincere) that he believes him.

ten thinks, maybe, what he wants now is to protect youngho.

it is senseless, is useless, that man is already dead and in hell where he ought to be…but ten wants nothing more than to keep youngho safe.

.  
.  
.

the day crawls on, each hour slow as the hands of time slither within the clocks they held inside their minds, each tick they grow a little closer, ‘till it’s lights out and they share a bubble of space on just one bed; and his only thoughts are to hold youngho close until he feels he won’t weep any longer.

he dozes off many times, but every time his mind so much as flashes the metal glint of a gun, the sparks that fly or, or the bodies that fall as they’re slaughtered like pigs and they drop like flies—he wakes up.

always teetering between insanity and a constant state of aloofness.

to squander sanity on memories of “war”, or to live in the moment?, his mind suggests.

he focuses on his surroundings instead.

the cell seems completely empty with the way it’s coloured, drab and tired in its grayness, the halls look dark and sleepy, the bed tough yet soft, youngho is curled up beside him, face peaceful, pretty—like always, so pretty, so haunted too; but tonight it’s truly (almost completely) peaceful.

he hopes he can keep that peacefulness there forever.

_(then, though quiet, maybe in the middle of the night, youngho wakes with light so bright it blinds all in their bubble of darkness, just to ask him if he had a monster too—asks in this tiny little voice that drifts between childish and mature that ten can’t help but weaken to. it’s hard to answer, forces him to peel back a layer or two to say, but he admits with few words that the only monster he knew was himself. youngho’s reply is sleepy disagreement and a moment of breath before he explains—“I don’t think you’re a monster.” and it sound horribly cliché—but it’s hushed in haste, because all and even himself agree he’s no angel. then, once more, the silence of slumber prevails.)_

for once, chittaphon finds that both he and youngho sleep well through the night; not a hint of fear nor never-fading memories in sight.

**Author's Note:**

> tw//they talk about what happened to johnny: references to csa/s*xual ab*se, self-defense;murder. correct me if I am wrong, but ten's ptsd and bad experiences may also be mentioned. not sure what else to put. if there's anything you find or potentially find triggering, feel free to tell me and I'll add it here.


End file.
